For months, both before and after Russia and China's double veto in the UN Security Council, every day's "news" in the prostituted "international media" has been that Russia is discarding, or about to discard, its iron opposition to "regime change" in Syria. Just Thursday, both State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland and simultaneously French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius claimed to be in discussions with Russia about planning for a post-Assad Syria and the like, so that on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was forced once more to deny both reports. "If that was really said, that was not true," he responded when asked about Nuland's remarks. "There were no such discussions and there could not have been such discussions. This completely contradicts our position. We are not involved in regime change through either the UN Security Council or through involvement in any sort of political conspiracies."

But this latest denial will probably not convince the gullible, including among our own associates, who continue to believe such reports regardless. Perhaps a lively, lengthy and completely unapologetic outline of Russian policy by Lavrov in Friday's "Huffington Post" will help them get over the problem. Russia's concern is a thermonuclear world war; as Lavrov wrote, "There is a certain limit reached by crises in international relations that cannot be overstepped without causing damage to global stability." London and its puppet Obama are bending every effort to try to overstep that "limit," as the imperialist monetary system careens toward a hyperinflationary explosion.

Russia and Kofi Annan recently unveiled a joint initiative for calming the Syria crisis: a contact group to include the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Iran's neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iraq. Britain and Hillary Clinton rejected Iranian participation, with British Foreign Minister Hague saying it was "probably unworkable."

It is now reported, for example by Fabius, that a Syrian contact group of some description may meet in Geneva on June 30. Lavrov said that Russia could participate in such a meeting under the condition that it agreed with the list of participating nations, AFP reported today. He called Iran's involvement "absolutely essential." Lavrov added that the Geneva meeting must further avoid deciding the political future of Syria, and instead focus on ways to end the bloodshed. "If those two condition are met, we are ready and will definitely take part in such a conference," he said.

A bilateral Putin-Obama meeting has been scheduled for Monday, June 18, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico. Obama's National Security Council spokesman says that Syria is at the top of the list of what Obama wants to discuss.